Talk:Remote viewing/Archive 1

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archive 1 Archive 2 →

I made a number of significant edits to this article, attempting to give it a NPOV. It should now represent that remote viewing is a technique which was used in a research project, which had certain factual results, and that there are multiple interpretations of the results of this research project. Cortonin 00:22, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This article appears to be written from the point of view that Remote Viewing is a real phenomenon. Most scientists would disagree, I believe. This article needs a rewrite for NPOV.

Remote viewing means putting blindfolds on your customers and stealing their wallets. This article could be edited into something NPOV, possibly, but as it stands it is an affront to NPOV (and common sense). Ortolan88
Someone just removed the following:
The reality of remote viewing is contested, with many scientists considering it to be a fictitious phenomenon, and studies into it to be pseudoscience at best, and fraud at worst.
on the ludicrous grounds that its presence made the article less NPOV! What remains is all POV, and dubious at that. Ortolan88

I think it was just moved. Almost the exact same thing now exists above the "history" heading. It could still use some NPOVing, though. Tokerboy 19:16 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

The original writer made a good effort to write a fair treatment of the subject. The opponents introduced POV with dismissive comments from a vague "most scientists" and adding unfounded allegations of fraud. Where is the evidence or even a specific claim of wallets being stolen? If you really believe that this is pseudoscience, would it not be better if you provided evidence for your POV? Eclecticology 19:22 Dec 6, 2002 (UTC)

Oops. Sorry for misreading your edit, but this is still a ludicrous subject/article. I don't buy this article as a good effort to give a fair treatment; it is filled with undocumented assertions taken as gospel. I don't have to provide any countering evidence because in all the wordy length of this article there is not one single citation of anything that anybody ever viewed remotely, not even as an example, not to mention as an instance of any benefit to anyone, just a lot of undocumented assertions of the general type: "if you only knew what we know you would believe it too". Ortolan88
Ortolan, the subject definitely deserves an article -- after all, US taxpayer money was really spent on this. (Fortunately, unlike the infamous MKULTRA mind control program, this doesn't seem to have involved dangerous experiments on humans.) The article still needs NPOV work, though, and needs to accurately reflect the scientific consensus. --Eloquence
Okay, let's have an article then, not a press release for FATE Magazine. Has any remote viewer ever seen anything? So far as I know, it's all been like the conversation between Polonius and Hamlet (Act iii. Sc. 2.):
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that ?s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ?t is like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
That skeptical guy, Ortolan88


As the original author of this article, I appreciate the feedback. As you can tell, I'm new to the Wikipedia. The concensus criteria that this community uses for NPOV is still not clear to me. I figure that none of us individually has an NPOV, so as I understand the theory of it, the wiki process will evolve an article to that NPOV state, or close enough to it for consensus, so if I continue to hang around and contribute and read, I will eventually learn by example.

Already I'm learning, and I still have plenty of questions. For example, I did not realize that adding citations for specific cases or remote viewing sessions might add to NPOV. Most of the wikipedia articles I have read are very brief. I was worried that the article was a little long as it was, and adding too many details might make it seem like I'm trying to build a case for RV (which I am not). I was under the impression that an encyclopedia article's purpose is not to convince the reader of any particular point of view, but to describe the topic (from several points of view, in the case of controversial topics), provide some history or background when applicable, and provide pointers to further information for those who want more details. Any rules of thumb that you folks use to decide when to add more detail vs. when to delete? And any rules of thumb on limiting how many external links one might include in an article?

Grizzly

I think your approach is essentially correct. I may have been critical of some of your writing style, but that can be cleaned up easily enough. As long as you were not appearing as a registered user you would receive more than usual scrutiny. Common vandalism, or just weird things often come from unregistered users. By choosing a controversial subject you were bound to draw attention. When it comes to anomolous science the forces of scientific orthodoxy are quick to dismiss these things as pseudoscience or frauds; in doing so they tend to completely ignore scientific method.
Keep up the efforts. Eclecticology 11:03 Dec 7, 2002 (UTC)

Extreme views aside - I'm not quite clear on what these 'extreme views' are that are being set aside. Does it refer to the views expressed in the para above of "mainstream science"?? -Martin

I was refering to the view that (all) parapsychology is pseudoscience, i.e. that parapsychologists are not really scientists and are not taking a scientific approach to their subject. Likewise the view that all parapsychologists are practicing fraud. Grizzly 06:37 Dec 12, 2002 (UTC)

They don't have to be acting in bad faith, but there is still nothing in this article showing any practical demonstration of anyone's being one place and seeing something somewhere else and proving it. Penn and Teller viewed the future of the Superbowl and teleported it into a pickle bottle guarded by Marines in the middle of Times Square, but they didn't claim to be scientists. Let these sincere scientists show their tricks to Penn and Teller. Ortolan88

I've done considerable revisions, as you can see. The historical portions were taken mostly from Puthoff's own historical overview, as many of the other sites contain history at odds with his. For instance it appears to be the case that the CIA approached him AFTER he started the experiments with Swann, yet almost all other histories claim the opposite.

Also to add to the debate here, in general the research carried out by Puthoff and Targ at SRI is considered by books on the topic to be shoddy at best, and outright fraud at worst. Puthoff was seemingly willing to promote any evidence as positive, ignoring the rest. For instance in one case Swann suggested remote viewing Jupiter just prior to the arrival of Pioneer 10, which Puthoff mentions as being positive. In fact Swann described a 30,000 foot tall mountain range, a physical impossibility (due to gravity alone, not just that the planet is made of gas). This part of the "positive result" is conveniently missing from his mentions of the run, and any mention at all is generally missing in most articles. In other examples they are apparently unable to demonstrate the tests even took place. You can read about these problems, notably the "missing" results, in a number of Gardner's books. SRI seems to have been happy to continue their tenure as long as they were bringing in money, but when the project ended it seems they both left (or were canned) and formed their own company to make money using PSI on the silver futures market. I consider the whole SRI era to be generally laughable.

The SAIC experiments, on the other hand, cannot be critisized on this basis. They were well run, fairly rigorous in terms of methodology, and did return an overall positive result. The only serious concern brought forth was the widespready use of a single judge, which, admittedly is fairly disconserting. However the results are interesting, and indeed as Utts points out, the ganzfield experiments are similarily free from obvious error. Why well-contolled experiments like these were not carried out from the very start of the parapsychology era is a matter of historical interest I suppose, but the field is now certainly "tainted" by these earlier results. Nevertheless both reports agree that the results de deserve further research.

Contents

Nobel Prize

OK. I love listening to Art Bell, too. Nothing like some Fortean fun. In fact, I'm listening to him interviewing Major Ed Dames as I type. But, please, people, if absolutely *anything* about Remote Viewing were verifiably true, I don't think we'd need to pay Ed Dames or anyone else big money to find out about "how it works". I think that the news would come to the entire planet in the form of a Nobel Prize. If people were able to demonstrate that they could _project their mind's eye_ into _anywhere in the space-time continuum_, don't you believe that honest scientists would be clamoring to verify it?

I think this article is completely POV and needs a complete rewrite from scratch. --NightMonkey 08:57, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Courtney Brown

I also wanted to draw attention to the article on Dr. Courtney Brown, which goes beyond the biographical to include that particular flavor of remote viewing, and life on Mars, and Greys and evil lizards. Like many people, I'm suspicious of remote viewing, but I think it should be on Wikipedia. If supporters of Remote Viewing think that we're being too critical, they should hop over to the string theory page and see how an ostensibly orthodox scientific theory still receives critical treatment. Maybe Remote Viewing is true, but given the understanding of it at this stage, it is unfair to treat it like Kepler's Laws or other heavily researched, heavily verified parts of science.

NPOV disputed

I just put the article into dispute. This article still reads as if Remote Viewing were a proven and accurate "scientific tool". While I've been doing some minor work on the article to reduce the POV, as have others, the article still remains POV, and readers should be alerted to that. Let the refactoring begin! ;) --NightMonkey 20:44, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Recent edits by Cortonin, while done in good faith, really muddle the article more, rather than clearing up POV. I would like to ask folks if they would object to a complete clearing of the article to allow for a full rewrite - a rewrite that is "just the facts", and lean on the New Age flash and smoke, and perhaps some discussion of Remote Viewing being peddled to sell more and more "esoteric" knowledge and "techniques" by hucksters and charlatans.--NightMonkey 20:17, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
You're using the phrase "NPOV", but at the same time your last edit and what you're saying are not promoting NPOV. Saying that remote viewing is definitively a pseudoscience is not NPOV, it's presenting an opinion as fact. Remote viewing researchers put forward hypotheses and test them, thus making their work under the scientific method, and thus is not "pseudoscience by definition". It is acceptable to say that critics of remote viewing call it pseudoscience, since that is a fact. It is not encyclopedic to definitively state it as such while there are scientists researching the phenomenon using the scientific method.
Similarly, you edited back in the statement, "The scientific value of such research has, to such date, been very low." This is a subjective assessment which is in direct contrast to the conclusion of one of the two evaluators mentioned in the final conclusion section. The Jessica Utts report declares that remote viewing has been definitively proven to work beyond reasonable doubt. So it is not NPOV to declare the exact opposite to this as obvious fact in the header of this article. I'm undoing those two changes to maintain actual NPOV. Since there is legitimate dispute between respected and educated researchers evaluating these projects, it is not NPOV to claim that one side is correct. Cortonin 21:52, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oh this kind of thing is so tedious sometimes. A great place to start to see what claptrap this is is to see the Straight Dope [article] on Remote Viewing and Psychic Research. If a 15% success rate in a single study is "proof beyond reasonable doubt"... NPOV does not mean devoid of truth. I don't think that science is *only* hypothesis and testing. Otherwise, I could do "scientific research" by just positing "my cat is made of metal" and test and test and test, ad nauseum. It is also the power (i.e. significance) of the resulting data, and its verfiability and repeatability by other parties. By the way, The Jessica Utts page has been marked for deletion. I voted yes. However, for this article, I'd love to hear others chime in to mediate. --NightMonkey 23:34, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
The vast majority of objections to parapsychology research are due to misunderstandings of statistics, including the article you referenced and the comment you made (no offense intended, of course). Babe Ruth had an 8.5% success rate at hitting home runs. Did Babe Ruth's hitting of home runs exceed what would be expected by chance? Was Babe Ruth's ability to hit home runs statistically significant? The answer is that you can't evaluate this information by looking at a percentage, and you should not try. Examine the following meta-analysis article, and if you follow the statistical argument presented you will see that there is less than a one in a trillion chance of there not being a realistic ability discovered within parapsychology. That article also describes the common mistakes many people make when looking at small to moderate effect statistical data, including parapsychology studies. Combined z-scores of those values are definitively indicative of a real phenomenon being measured.
With that said, the fact remains that NPOV means presenting simply the facts of the matter, which are that these things are measured, and that there are people who disagree over the interpretations and meaning of the measurements made. Cortonin 00:55, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Hmm... Cortonin, I see that you are new here. While I'm not an expert on NPOV, from reading the Wikipedia Guidelines, I can tell you that NPOV is actually much more than just "presenting simply the facts of the matter". That's not the sole purpose of an encyclopedic article. This article does not reflect the prevailing scientific view as widely accepted, and the "alternative" view as secondary. See NPOV:Giving "equal validity".
Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Can anyone provide references from other more reputable sources than Jessica Utts and the other non-peer reviewed websites listed in this article? Where is the widespread confirming peer review that should be available if the science and statistics are so irrefutable? I mean, please, if Remote Viewing had even 1/10th the power and validity many of its proponents ascribe to it, we'd be reading about it in Scientific American, Nature or Science, among many other respected and widely read scientific publications, radio stations, television networks, etc. And no, I'm not a statistician, but I don't need to be one to know that the way this article presents this subject is not reflecting the prevailing scientific understanding of this subject. However, if there is a statistician in the house, would they please speak up? :) This article sure could use your help. --NightMonkey 09:16, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)
If presenting the majority view gets in the way of presenting the facts of the matter, then that's not encyclopedic, it's editorialistic. An encyclopedia article should focus on the factual truth, and should present majority and minority opinions as such as components of factual truth. In describing how disagreement exists, it is indeed sensible to say which are the minority views and which are the majority views, however it should be said that it can be difficult to objectively evaluate this. Some polls have shown that 2/3 of college professors and 25% of "elite scientists" believe in ESP. One poll in France showed that over 50% of those with natural science degrees believe in ESP (and showed that this belief increases as education increases). But other than that, there don't seem to be whole lot of assessments done of the general scientific consensus. You can't effectively judge consensus by who speaks the loudest. But regardless, these numbers show that the consensus is not extremely far to either side.
As for additional evidence beyond the material already in the article, it should definitely be said that the remote viewing technique is a small and relatively recent addition to the field of parapsychology. For other supporting evidence it would be more productive to look at other parapsychology studies (of which many are in peer reviewed journals). However, I don't believe these other topics would be appropriate for this particular article, since this only discusses the subset of remote viewing.
I'm removing this sentence, "Little verifiable evidence of the efficacy of Remote Viewing exists, and what has been publicly presented to date appears to be, at best, inconclusive.", since the studies that were done published evidence which is verifiable (simply by repeating the experiments), and which statistically is determined to be conclusive. -Cortonin 12:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

NPOV:Pseudoscience

I'd just like to remind folks of the excellent guidlines listed in Wikipedia:The_perfect_article. Please read this article, and decide just how much of it meets up with the goals of a "Perfect Article".

I've quoted below the Wikipedia NPOV guideline on Pseudoscience. I just learned something myself in this debate over this article. We need to refactor this article to reflect both the majority (scientific) view as well as the minority (pseudoscientific), without the language that states or implys that the disputed findings are actually credible facts:

Pseudoscience
How are we to write articles about pseudoscientific topics, about which majority scientific opinion is that the pseudoscientific opinion is not credible and doesn't even really deserve serious mention?
If we're going to represent the sum total of "human knowledge"--of what we believe we know, essentially--then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. Things are not, however, as bad as that sounds. The task before us is not to describe disputes fairly, on some bogus view of fairness that would have us describe pseudoscience as if were on a par with science; rather, the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view, and, moreover, to explain how scientists have received pseudoscientific theories. This is all in the purview of the task of describing a dispute fairly.
There is a minority of Wikipedians who feel so strongly about this problem that they believe Wikipedia should adopt a "scientific point of view" rather than a "neutral point of view." However, it has not been established that there is really a need for such a policy, given that the scientists' view of pseudoscience can be clearly, fully, and fairly explained to those who might be misled by pseudoscience.'

So, perhaps all of our edits (including mine) should follow this guideline more closely. --NightMonkey 00:58, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Request for help at Wikipedia: Village Pump

Just put this up: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(assistance)#Remote_Viewing_-_psuedoscience.2Fprotoscience_as_established_fact...

Putting the link here for reference, and perhaps threaded replies. --NightMonkey 22:50, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)

Removed "Extraterrestrial research" section

Removed this section:

Extraterrestrial research

In his book PSI Spies, Jim Marrs describes the history of remote viewing and talks about remote viewer's experiences with extraterrestrial bases on Earth. He also talks about remote viewers experiences with events that took place on planet Mars.

Remote viewer Dr. Courtney Brown took the issue of extraterrestrial life to a higher level of research by focusing on their culture. His final data suggests that a Martian race of humanoid beings exist below the surface of Mars and in some underground Earth bases. He also confirmed the existence of a race of grey beings who are members of a spiritual Galactic Community of Worlds, a Galactic Federation. He also published remote viewing data in his latest book Cosmic Explorer about a race of reptilian extraterrestrial beings who are war like and seem to operate from a parallel world or another frequency of reality or dimension.

His data leads the reader to conclude that there is a spiritual struggle or multidimensional war taking place on Earth for our future between reptilian renegades and the Galactic Federation. One can't help but to see the resemblance of his data to certain biblical teachings, such as the story of Adam and Eve and the deceiving "snake".

Joseph McMoneagle, one of the original Project Star Gate remote viewers, wrote in his book "Remote Viewing Secrets" that the remote viewing protocol is not suitable for viewing unverifiable locations such as extraterrestrial civilizations, because feedback is an essential part of the training process in the remote viewing protocol.

I'm not against having a section talking about the purported alien experiences, but less breathless endorsement of the existence of a "Galactic Community of Worlds" and the like is sorely needed. --NightMonkey 19:49, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. I think the only worthwhile paragraph of that section was the last one, so I moved that paragraph into the "Applications" section, minus the "extraterrestrial civilizations" part, as a clarification of the limits of remote viewing. --Cortonin 21:44, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Works for me (tm). Thanks, Cortonin. --NightMonkey 22:56, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
OK, now after removing it, there does need to be some discussion of the fact that there are many people and organizations in the Remote Viewing community that continue to perform these sorts of "sessions" - RVing Satan, Aliens, Middle Earth, etc., some of whom are considered "researchers" in the field. While I don't want to add this back, we do need to cover that aspect of RV in a more "popular culture" sort of way in this article. --NightMonkey 00:38, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
I think those people are well outside of even the mainstream of the Remote Viewing community, so it certainly doesn't need to be a significant component. From what I have read, a handful of the mainstream researchers tried these types of things in early work, and they seem to have concluded that it didn't work and that it wasn't reasonable to use remote viewing in this way. --Cortonin 23:48, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Incorporating POV

We should describe all major points of view (POV) in this article:

  • the materialistic view of most scientists
  • the spiritualistic or New Age view of typical believers
  • the open-minded view of some scientists

Many people are unaware of the division amoung scientists between "pure materialists" and the utterly open-minded. Thus they fail to distinguish between prejudice and evidence:

  1. prejudice - nothing exists but the material world, therefore supernatural phenomena could not possibly exist
  2. evidence - we looked for it with open minds, as impartial observers who do concede the possibility of these phenomena (and here is what we found)

I have collected some anecdotal evidence of remote viewing, astral projection, detection of auras, encounters with ghosts and angels, etc. BUT I have not subjected any of this to the scrutiny of impartial observers yet, so I haven't published it.

Our standards for writing Wikipedia articles on supernatural phenomena, ESP, etc. should fairly present the POV of three kinds of authorities:

  1. those who WANT to believe in these phenomena
  2. those who REFUSE to believe, i.e., it's theoretically impossible and ALL reports are fakes
  3. those who have an open mind and will believe or disbelieve according to impartial, REPEATABLE tests

I daresay that any Wikipedian who is in group #2 will have a hard time writing from the neutral point of view, as they will tend to use the article to prove the charlatans wrong.

I'm in group #1, so you might think I'm prejudiced with wishful thinking, but I'm also in group #3. I would like to discuss with other Wikipedians what they think an "impartial, repeatable test" might be. We could also write about the results of such tests. I'm guessing that so far, all such tests have proven negative; if so, the article will be easy to write: just say that impartial researchers have NEVER found anyone who can do it. --user:Ed Poor (talk) 14:35, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

I think your divisions are useful for examining the situation. I think that the focus of a wikipedia article description should be from the perspective of section three of your list of "authorities", as this is the most encyclopedic and neutral of the views. It does not come into the article with preconceived notions of what should or should not be true, but simply examines the evidence. However, since an article on remote viewing is not just about remote viewing, but about the people involved with it, that also means that people from the first two categories should be discussed with clarifiers indicating that these people are known proponents or critics when this is appropriate.
Your division is useful because it raises the important point that controversial topics such as this are NOT just proponents versus critics, because there is also the third category of the scientific approach of examining evidence for its merits. It is tempting at time to classify people as just proponents or critics when writing an article like this, but that ignores the differences in how they come to their views. Some come to those views predisposed, and some come to those views by examining the evidence. (And it is not our place to speculate about the nature of their thoughts, but only about the nature of their presented reasoning.) This is why the article needs to be more than just opinions of proponents and critics, but also needs to objectively discuss the nature of the evidence to present the basis by which the most reasoned proponents and critics are making their conclusions.
I think we have a good start on this, but there is certainly much more that could be done with time. We could, for example, include specific details about experimental results and their statistical analyses. This would present more of a background for discussions about their interpretation. --Cortonin 19:59, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)


the materialistic view is incompatible with openmindidness? Can you prove that claim?Geni 21:19, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The materialistic view is not intrinsically incompatible with open-mindedness, but I believe he's referring to the case where materialism is used as an axiomatic premise, as this is incompatible with open-mindedness. But this is a slight digression. I think the important point is that the article we're discussing should focus on the open-minded evidence-based approach, rather than having its primary focus on either of the two axiomatic premises. The article should also mention the impact of the two belief systems, as they are important to understanding the history of this topic. --Cortonin 23:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)


You can of course show that materialism is a belife system rather than a system based on evidenceGeni 00:01, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Materialism can be a premise or a conclusion. For those who take materialism as a premise, it's tempting or even inevitable that they will reject any evidence of supernatural phenomena -- on the grounds that "it simply cannot be so".

Now do you have evidence that this is the position of the majority of scientists?Geni 17:51, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For those who take materialism as a conclusion or "working hypothesis", evidence of supernatural phenomena would be welcome. ("Gosh, I never thought ESP or ghosts could be true, but these reports can't be explained any other way. Maybe there's something to this.")

The difference is one's policy on "falsification". A statement is a "hypothesis" only if it could conceivably be proven false. And you're approaching the matter with an open mind only if you're prepared to change your mind if you encounter evidence which proves the hypotheses false.

For example, if your hypothesis is that water cannot conduct electricity (no matter what materials might be dissolved in it). So you try putting all sorts of things in water or scrounge around for existing water samples, and try to pass an electric current through it. If you succeed, then you have DISPROVEN your initial hypothesis. And your "open-minded" conclusion would be that it IS POSSIBLE for water to conduct electricity.

The challenge for remote viewing (and similar phenomena) is to formulate a statement of a hypothesis in such a way that it COULD CONCEIVABLY be "falsified". --user:Ed Poor (talk) 17:26, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

In general, it's difficult to formulate a hypothesis that something does exist and then prove that it doesn't exist by falsifying that hypothesis. Try to prove that neon-pink elephants don't exist by falsifying the claim that they do. You can't do this without systematically searching all of existence. This is often simplified with claims like, "Try to prove that neon-pink elephants don't exist in the kitchen," which is easier to falsify by a systematic search. Falsification is most useful, however, when a statement can be falsified by a body of evidence, even if not everything possible has been observed. The statement, "Remote Viewing does not exist" can be more easily falsified by showing evidence that it does exist. You can deduce that Remote Viewing probably does not exist by disproving all the evidence existing and by invoking Occam's Razor. But falsification is not a practical method of disproving it due to the size of the search space. It wouldn't be reasonable for this article to indicate such. --Cortonin 00:00, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Where's Osama?

OK, here's a question. If Remote Viewing is such an accomplished science, why can't it find Osama bin Laden? Or why didn't it find Saddam Hussein? Or why do we still have any vicious criminals "on the loose"? Where is the Anthrax Killer? Shouldn't these high-priority targets be easily found by at least one remote viewer? --NightMonkey 20:06, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

In "Remote Viewing Secrets" by Joseph McMoneagle (one of the viewers trained in the early projects), he comments that the Remote Viewing protocol they developed is not suitable for locating people. As he explained, using the Remote Viewing protocol to get a description of what the room someone is standing in looks like doesn't really do any good for helping you find them unless you have been there before. There are clear differences between a limited process like this and omniscience, and it's not really fair to hold it to the standards of omniscience. --Cortonin 23:25, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Huh. OK, then help me out here. The opening sentence of this article is this:
Remote viewing (RV) is a procedure developed by parapsychologists. It is claimed that it allows a viewer to use his or her clairvoyant abilities to "view", i.e. gather information on a target consisting of an object, place, person, etc., which is hidden from physical view of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer in space by some distance, and sometimes separated in time (future or past) as well.'
Now, it says "...gather information on a target consisting of an object, place, person, etc...". Is this not an inconsistency in the protocol, or in the article? I can appreciate that, if the Remote Viewing phenomenon exists, it would be difficult to locate people who are in locations that cannot be specifically placed from the details provided in a single session. However, could not multiple ongoing, continuous and intensive "sessions" eventually tease out enough information to narrow the search for a person? So, if Osama is seen in a cave, yeah, that's not specific enough. But if the remote viewers then watch him, see that sometimes he's in a cave and sometimes he's in a trailer, in an office, on a mesa, or in a house, etc., his location could be narrowed. Is he ever standing in front of a sink? Oh, then he might be in a location with indoor plumbing, that narrows it down... you get the idea. If the details that Remote Viewing provides are not specific enough to locate people, how is it specific or accurate enough to provide anything that is usefull at all? --NightMonkey 05:43, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe someone could develop a step-by-step protocol for extracting information of that sort a piece at a time, as you describe, but that isn't part of what was researched. Those involved have written clearly that they found that the procedure they developed wasn't suitable for that type of information. The opening states that it can gather information, but not that it can gather all conceivable information. There were some tests done on sites using just geographic location which were later compared to satellite images, and these were found to be productive. One could speculate that an application of this could be to examine the inside of a specific building given its geographic location, which would extend beyond the capabilities of a typical satellite. I don't know if any specific tests were done of this type on real intelligence targets as opposed to just experimental targets, but this would fit within the observed capabilities of the protocol that was developed. Locating people or things would not, and if it were possible it would apparently require a slightly different protocol.
Perhaps part of the confusion is your interpretation of the phrase "consisting of" in the phrase "target consisting of an object, place, person, etc". The information obtained is not object, place, or person. Those are descriptions of what the targets can be. The information obtained is an image. --Cortonin 19:52, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Poor NPOV language

OK, this is just a few examples, but I hope that it can be seen as applying to other components of the article. Take this sentence:

'Remote viewing was originally developed under a US government-sponsored program, with an eye toward intelligence-gathering applications for the CIA and military clients.'

Now, it implies that the subject (Remote Viewing) is an established and working phenomenon. It was "developed", which implies that the "development" is complete, not that it is incomplete or on-going.

Now, this paragraph:

During this period Swann suggested yet another change to the study, wherein the viewers would view a location given nothing but its geographical coordinates. Puthoff and Targ were skeptical, but developed a series of test procedures to try it out. The CIA sent back the coordinates of a site to be viewed, one in West Virginia and another in the Urals. Funding was continued for another year.

The implication here is that the funding was continued solely due to the positive outcome of the new procedures. However, as the $436 Hammer controversy showed, merit is often not the primary reason for continued (or even initial) funding on government or defense projects. However, we do not know this from the article as it is, and no references are given to substantiate this claim.

There is so much of this sort of thing in this article, it's difficult to discuss without putting a ton of effort and time into it by going sentence by sentence, just because it is so unnecessarily long. More to come... --NightMonkey 20:25, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

I fixed the first concern. It was a simple matter of changing "Remote viewing" to "The remote viewing protocol", since that's what was actually developed.
The second concern I'm not so sure about. I don't see how the funding being continued then was particularly important, as I don't see funding itself being of particular importance. What is important for the article is simply that further work was done, as the history continues on with in the following sections. Perhaps we could just remove the "Funding was continued" sentence? --Cortonin 23:34, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. However, the article should show the range of years that funding was available, perhaps at the beginning of the article or the CIA section. Do we have explicit date range (or ranges) for U.S. and Soviet government funding for RV research? --NightMonkey 05:52, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Remote Viewing and Astral Projection.

From the astral projection page:

Astral projection is an out of body experience (OBE) technique, sometimes associated with the occult and the New Age movement, where it is said that the "astral body", or "double", which some believe to be one of several co-incident "bodies" in each person, is able to move free of the physical body. During astral projections, sometimes the traveler reports being attached to his/her physical body by a silver umbilical cord.

And from the Out-of-body experience page:

An out-of-body experience (or OBE, or OOBE) is the subjective perception that one is no longer in one's body, while (generally) being able to perceive it from the outside. It is sometimes associated with near-death experiences, hypnopompic or hypnagogic dreams, mystical trances or occult phenomena, and psychoactive drugs, mainly dissociative hallucinogens such as ketamine, DXM and PCP.

And from the Clairvoyance page:

Clairvoyance is defined as a form of extra-sensory perception that it is claimed allows a person to perceive distant objects, persons, or events, including "seeing" through opaque objects and the detection of types of energy not normally perceptible to humans (i.e. radio waves). Typically, such perception is reported in visual terms, but may also include auditory impressions (sometimes called clairaudience) or kinesthetic impressions.

Remote viewing is the process of viewing a location from remote in a trancelike state. It does not involve leaving the body, nor does it involve astral cords, double bodies, near-death experiences, or anything of the sort. Thus the only one of these three that it's directly comparable, to the extent of an "also known as", is clairvoyance. Remote viewing is essentially the same thing as clairvoyance except for one difference, which is that remote viewing is closely associated with a specific remote viewing protocol because it was developed in a lab setting, whereas clairvoyance simply labels the ability. All of this information about the relationship between remote viewing and clairvoyance is already correctly stated in the opening paragraphs of the remote viewing article.

I changed the main article's opening sentence to more clearly reflect these things. --Cortonin 17:37, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aaron C. Donahue

Well, he may be a certified remote viewer, but the url that is submitted has nothing to do with remote viewing. I click on it and I see a page with the title, "The Elected President of the United States of America in 2004", and a picture of a skeleton walking on other skulls. There is no other text on the page. So if someone can find a more on-topic page to place for his url, then that would be fine. But that url has nothing to do with the topic of remote viewing. --Cortonin 06:26, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A simple Google search would have told you what you do not know. Cliking through the link also would have helped you. He "Remote Viewed" the winner of the 2004 election. He's a certified "Advanced Technical Remote Viewer". It's his site. The section in this article is for "Psychic Links". Perhaps moving this link into a section for individual Remote Viewers' sites is appropriate, not deleting the link entirely. He has other predictions listed (mass extinctions, Bush's health, Armageddon, and others), seen if you click through the image you speak of. Shouldn't examples of actual professed and certified "Remote Viewers" be reflected here? I think so. I disagree that this has nothing to do with the topic of remote viewing - actual practitioners should be given as clear examples of "applied" remote viewing. Reverting the revert - and will continue to do so.
Here's the Art Bell Bio page on Aaron C. Donahue, listing this site (ummo.cc) as his base on the web:
[[1]] --NightMonkey 07:49, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
Well, upon Googling I see that he's a legitimate person to list, but his website is almost completely incomprehensible. It might almost be better to list someone else's description of him. — Cortonin | Talk 09:38, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Feel free to add another site link (the Art Bell Bio might suffice). Don't delete the current link without good reason, please. --NightMonkey 00:11, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Removing NPOV dispute.

After recent edits by Nightwing, which organized the article nicely, I made a few more reorganizations and removed some of the sentences which were merely speculation. I also checked over all the NPOV issues described here, and everything brought up seems to be resolved. I think we've achieved a good representation of neutrality, so I'm removing the NPOV dispute tag. I think the article has reached the point where improvement can still continue, but without the need for the NPOV dispute tag. Good work people.  :) — Cortonin | Talk 16:05, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No way. You can't just remove NPOV tags without discussion. I retract and apologize, however, for what I said in the edit comments about you adding POV "in spades" - I saw a ton of what I thought were deletions that were really moves - should have looked more carefully. So, let's leave it open to the editors here - is it time to remove NPOV? We'll wait 72 hours. --NightMonkey 19:55, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Rather than looking at the history, I recommend going through and reading the article again as a cohesive whole from start to finish, even the parts read before. I did this, and I think it's definitely up to NPOV quality.
It doesn't read like a ridicule of remote viewing, nor does it read like an endorsement of remote viewing. It reads like a description of what remote viewing is about, a description of what views the interested parties have on it, a description of the history involved with remote viewing, and a description of the evidence that has gathered and the different analyses and interpretations of that evidence. This is NPOV in a nutshell.
Future edits I would like to see would involve adding more detail about the specifics of the evidence gathered by the more serious studies involved, to better help readers in forming their own opinions from the source. — Cortonin | Talk 20:14, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, over 72 hours have elapsed and there have been no further disputes raised at this time. I think all the interested parties have had a chance to review the material. I'll take off the NPOV dispute tag. — Cortonin | Talk 01:37, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Sorry, "no input" is not a vote. I still believe this article, as it now stands, is biased and slanted towards a point of view that, among other blatant POVs, presupposes the following:
  • PSI phenomena are accepted by science
    • Remote viewing began as an experimental investigation. Like it or not, agree with its conclusions or not, it IS part of science by the definition of science. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • The burden of proof is on _scientists_ to disprove Remote Viewing, rather than adequately substantiated empirical evidence and falsifiable theories are the burden of Remote Viewing researchers to prove
    • Remote viewing has already been demonstrated overwhelmingly statistically significant by controlled experiment in a large number of labs, with consistent repeatability to the effect size. The only thing subject to interpretation within the rules of science is what the reason for that statistical significance is. Scientists who wish to doubt remote viewing DO need to provide some alternate explanation for the results of the experiments so far. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • The overall tone of the article does not adequately portray the overwhelming scientific skepticism of Remote Viewing and its practice
    • The acceptance of phenomena like Remote Viewing among scientists is between 25% and 50%, by the only meaningful polling data available. (See the parapsychology article, the numbers are in there.) So it would not be accurate to call scientific consensus as "overwhelmingly" the other way. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • There is little to no coverage of the Remote Viewing industry, and those who purport to sell RV
    • This is definitely true. I know nothing about this, so if you want to research it and add it to a section called "Remote Viewing Industry", I'm all for it. But that has nothing to do with NPOV dispute, it's just further information. I would look forward to reading about it. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • There is no discussion of the story of Elizabeth Smart, who Psi Tech said they remote viewed as "dead" a missing girl who was very much alive. See Psi Tech Smart
    • From the book "Remote Viewing Secrets" by McMoneagle, it states clearly that the first thing a remote viewer should explain to potential clients is the inaccuracies involved in the process. The experimental studies to date have only reported statistically significant accuracy, even among the top performing remote viewers, which should not be confused with 100% accuracy or omniscience. Nonetheless, that would make a perfectly acceptable external link, as it adds context. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • That a scientific procedure that has no basis in science is anything more than a religious ritual or a parlor game
    • That, my friend, would be the strongest POV we could possibly add. The goal is to remove such things, not add them. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
More needs to be done before this tag can be removed. Readers must be warned. Back it goes. --NightMonkey 07:41, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
You've had a pretty long time since it went on dispute to edit and think of specific problems with the article, but all that remains after the edits which have occurred is an opinion that the article should be exclusively a scathing criticism of remote viewing and its history. That of course would not be NPOV. If you can't find specific criticisms, I would ask you to stop readding the NPOV dispute tag, since there does not actually seem to be one. — Cortonin | Talk 17:25, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
All existing specific areas of NPOV dispute have been dealt with, and no new specific areas of NPOV dispute have been raised in a fairly long time of a few weeks. If there is any dispute remaining, it does not appear to be with any specifics of the article, but instead a dispute over the topic (which is currently covered by the two sections which break down the public POV categories of proponent and critic). Since the NPOV tag is designed to bring in help to fix an article, and not designed to label a topic as controversial, I will remove it now. — Cortonin | Talk 16:54, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Nope, don't agree. The article still needs work to remove bias and other problems, as I state clearly above. Just because you edit my comments to add your own doesn't mean that the problem has been "answered". NPOV stays for now, until substantive progress is made. --NightMonkey 21:26, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
Allow me to quote from the NPOV dispute page: "For example, ideologues, when presented with an article that has exemplary neutrality (as per our policy), will consider the article biased precisely because it does not reflect their own bias enough. Probably, such people simply do not understand the NPOV policy." "Everyone can agree that marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure, and should be followed up by actual contributions to the article in order to put it in such a state that people agree that it has a NPOV."
You should not mark an NPOV dispute without giving us specific examples of what you find to not be NPOV. You've had much opportunity to do so. If you're going to place the NPOV dispute flag again, please reread the article all the way through, and come up with specific statements in need of neutralization BEFORE placing the NPOV dispute. (For reference, you can use the NPOV page.) — Cortonin | Talk 02:20, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Please see my many remarks above, specifically regarding the language bias of the article. I can re-add NPOV all day, Cortonin, to ensure that readers are made aware that the article's bias is in contention. Now, it should still be said that the article has seen worse days, but I still believe that the language and word choice, as well as the order in which statements are mentioned, must be drastically remade before NPOV can be removed. It stays. --NightMonkey 05:25, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
I read your many remarks above. Let me reference the ones relating to NPOV... You want the article to:
  • say that psi phenomena are completely rejected by science
  • say that there is overwhelming scientific skepticism (or disbelief) about remote viewing
  • say that remote viewing is just a parlor trick
As I explained above, the first two aren't true, and the third one is overwhelming POV. So could you explain more clearly what it would take for you to consider the article to not be in NPOV dispute anymore? When I read these things that you've suggested as making the article more NPOV, it makes me think that maybe you're not sure what NPOV means. If you're not, please check here: Neutral point of view. — Cortonin | Talk 23:43, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Randi, offer, or alleged offer?

The Randi Foundation claims that it has never conducted a formal test of anyone's paranormal abilities. It claims that the reason for this is that no one has ever passed the informal preliminary tests, which are passable only by their own judgment. Show me Randi's published white papers describing each of those preliminary tests, so that we can see the precise testing conditions and objectively decide whether or not the testing is legitimate. I haven't seen any, and without those his "offer" is only an "alleged offer", since there have been no such properly conducted formal tests, and thus no indication that it's a legitimate contest beyond that it is "alleged" to be one. — Cortonin | Talk 17:47, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. He put money in escrow, he has a clearly delinetaed application form. You can contest his methods (he's not a scientist), but not the fact that he's made the offer. If you have links to information from rejected applicants claiming he's commiting fraud in his offer, I'm sure that would be fodder for the James Randi page. --NightMonkey 22:59, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it "fraud", simply a big show with no legitimate scientific evaluation of claimants ever having been done. So the legitimacy of the offer is questionable, regardless of the existence of money. — Cortonin | Talk 23:41, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ingo Swann & importance to "Remote Viewing"

Quick google found a number of references pointing to the view that Ingo Swann was instrumental in forming the "procedure" known as Remote Viewing in its current popular form. Many of these articles say "Swann and SRI" or similar phrasing, indicating that Swann and his work was in cooperation with, but not as an employee of, SRI. Here's where I'll put links (more to come), others are welcome - but please sign the link below, as I do:

Okay, but we need to make clear that there were others who contributed. It would be inappropriate to attribute the entirety of its development to Ingo Swann, even if he was a central figure. I tweaked it to try to make that clear. — Cortonin | Talk 23:47, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dowsing

Please read the definition of dowsing. This has nothing to do with remote viewing, it is an entirely different practice. — Cortonin | Talk 23:44, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here is a clear example of your bias, and your actions which bring your own opinions into the body of this article. Again, a simple Google search on "Remote Viewing Dowsing" brings up a plethora of sites, many of which indicate a relationship with Remote Viewing. Many providers of “courseware” on Remote Viewing also offer courses on Dowsing. Some appear to offer classes in Dowsing with lessons on Remote Viewing. The goal here is to portray the current received knowledge on a subject. So, please don't pretend to be coming from an objective viewpoint. Wikipedia doesn't care if you have a bias or not, but if your bias creates a biased article, then that's a different matter. The fact that both dowsing, Remote Viewing and Clairvoyance are, as reported, very similar examples of what are called "psychic powers", and that should be reflected clearly here. However, this, as another Wikipedian commented here, is an article from FATE magazine, even after all of these edits. --NightMonkey 07:21, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
Oh, yeah, and dictionary.reference.com doesn't even have a defitition for "Remote Viewing", so I don't think you really wanted to use that for your argument against including "Dowsing"... --NightMonkey 07:22, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
What you see as "bias" is simply me trying to establish accuracy here. Yes, remote viewing, clairvoyance, dowsing, telepathy, etc, etc, all these fall under the category of "psychic powers" or "ESP". However, that does not mean they are all the same technique or all the same procedure. That would be like saying jumping and running are both leg powers, so the pole vault is the same as the 100 meter sprint. Being in the same category does not make them equal.
If you read the sites that come up when you do your suggested google search for "remote viewing dowsing", of the first 10, 7 of them simply list "remote viewing" and "dowsing" on the same page, in the sense of them being in a list, 1 of them says that some people use dowsing instead of remote viewing (meaning they are different), 1 of them says that "remote viewing is close but different from other paranormal phenomena, like dowsing on maps, psychic “crime solvers” or talking to the dead" (on a page called "Deluded Viewing"), and only one of them says "Remote viewing might well be called Psychic Dowsing. Instead of a twig or other device", and that last one is skepdic.com, which spends all its time ridiculing such things. But clearly from that search, it can be seen that remote viewing is not considered to be the same as dowsing by remote viewers. In fact, what can be seen is that the only instances of it being likened to dowsing are by critics, which is why I think it's sensible to keep the section in the Criticisms section which mentions some critics considering it the same thing as dowsing. In the end, however, despite the criticisms, the literal definitions of the two things are clearly not the same. — Cortonin | Talk 23:26, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hal

Hal Puthoff and I were on a physics email list a few years ago. I wrote him outside the group if he could "remote view" me, and tell me what he saw. He replied something to the effect that he was just a supervisor for the remote viewing project and never actually did it himself. BF 00:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe this corresponds to the mentioning of him in this article. — Cortonin | Talk 02:53, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Perpetual dispute

This article has been in NPOV dispute for over a month, during which time no specific areas of dispute were given and no actual contributions were made to the article except for one anon. According to NPOV dispute, Wikipedia policy clearly states, Everyone can agree that marking an article as having an NPOV dispute is a temporary measure, and should be followed up by actual contributions to the article in order to put it in such a state that people agree that it has a NPOV. So in order to comply with Wikipedia policy of NPOV dispute being a temporary call for editing, and not a "permanent warning label to readers", the NPOV dispute is being removed. — Cortonin | Talk 08:58, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)